Rosethorn House is one of several BC Housing-funded supportive housing sites in Kamloops.

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

Kamloops isn't the only city challenging BC Housing as the Crown corporation in charge of housing the homeless eyes up more projects in the province.

From the Okanagan to the Lower Mainland, some local leaders are going so far as to block BC Housing's expanding portfolio of shelters and supportive housing as the issue of homelessness seems an endless investment.

They aren't united in their goals, but they have similar a similar impact by putting pressure back on the Crown agency.

"It seems like it's a good moment to pause and evaluate what's working and what is not," Kamloops city councillor Katie Neustaeter recently told iNFOnews.ca, as she reflected on the resistant sentiment from other communities.

The province's largest city recently moved to stop all new supportive housing projects. Though not a unanimous decision, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim's motion was prompted by the city's overrepresentation of supportive housing when compared to the rest of the metro area.

In Vernon, city councillor Kari Gares is bringing a motion to stop all new shelter builds until the impacts on the neighbourhoods surrounding current facilities is examined, while Penticton is continues to struggle with BC Housing and coordinating shelter plans, despite a previous spat with the province landing in court.

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"This community, our staff, council and mayor, continually fight the fight and BC Housing is the worst partner ever," Penticton city councillor Ryan Graham said in a recent council meeting. "They hold massive landholdings in this community and they're doing nothing with it."

For Kamloops, the most recent move to resist BC Housing projects came after iNFOnews.ca revealed its plans to build a new homeless shelter on River Street. It would have been situated on city-owned land and council moved to block the project before it got off the ground.

Councillor Mike O'Reilly followed that with a motion to block any future riverfront shelters. Earlier this year, he also led a call to have city staff explore ways to make up for the lost tax revenue that comes along with BC Housing facilities which are normally exempted.

Another recent debate around the Kamloops council table centred on whether or not to approve a new supportive housing site on the condition it be focused specifically on drug recovery, a debate Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon poured cold water on by urging council to let BC Housing determine what the community needs.

The resistant tactics being employed among local governments are troubling for some in the non-profit sector, however, including the executive director of Canadian Mental Health Association's Kamloops branch.

"We implore Council to take a solutions-focused approach and approve this rezoning — because without it, the conversation about programs and services is irrelevant. Without a roof, there is no recovery," executive director Alfred Achoba wrote in a recent letter to council, imploring them to approve the North Kamloops supportive housing site.

Achoba criticized the oppositional strategies as unproductive to solving the homelessness crisis seen in many BC cities, while suggesting there's little hope for people getting off the streets without facilities in place.

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"The more you say 'yes,' the more infrastructure you get, the more support you get," he said.

He added he was disappointed by the shutdown of the planned River Street shelter as the city faces the potential closure of two longstanding facilities in the coming weeks, while the newest North Shore shelter had already filled its 40-bed capacity shortly after opening.

Former Kamloops city councillor Arjun Singh similarly said the urgent issue around homelessness and the opioid crisis meant local leaders should be cooperative rather than oppositional with the province.

"Right now what tends to happen is the blame-game starts," he said. "Don't get me wrong sometimes blame is deserved, but I don't think it's a good place to be because people get more defensive and there's less of a chance to work together."

Looking back on his time on council in recent years, Singh said new policies on social issues "did not benefit" from perspectives from non-profits or the province until later, and some were walked back after making quick decisions in a "crisis." 

"What I would be advising our government people to do is to sit down over a table, take as long as you need and hash these challenging things out," he said. "(Collaboration) is something governments and society have gotten worse at over the past little while, so I think we have to get better at it again."

One of the major developments on Kamloops city council that came in Singh's final months at city hall was an agreement with BC Housing. It was meant to bring the local government and BC Housing together to coordinate new projects, rather than wait for the province announce new shelters or supportive housing sites without their knowledge.

Among the conditions in that memorandum of understanding was that BC Housing would plan new facilities and their locations alongside the city, including council. In the case of River Street, that didn't happen, even though it's a city-owned lot.

Neustaeter called it a "violation" of that agreement, and the lack of communication appears to be, at least in part, what led council to shut the entire project down.

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